Editorial
The Gist
- Conversational commerce is here. OpenAI’s new partnership with Shopify signals a shift toward natural language shopping — customers can now browse and buy entirely within ChatGPT.
- Generative commerce changes everything. Static product pages will give way to AI-generated, real-time product experiences tailored to each shopper’s intent and preferences.
- Amazon’s dominance is under pressure. While Amazon perfected convenience, it may struggle to match the personalization, dialogue and discovery offered by conversational AI platforms.
As you may have known, I’m a big quote guy. It’s my way of adding a little historical context and personal touch to the end of the articles I contribute for CMSWire. My calling card if you will. My stamp statement on each piece.
I feel like it’s important to read the walls of history as we move forward into the future, with open eyes, yet remembrance of those who lived before us and shared wisdom on the way they saw the world.
Recently, some quotes have been sticking out in my mind as I think they perfectly describe the macro of where we are as consumers, and where we are headed.
Like, when Jeff Bezos said, “We see our customers as invited guests to the party, and we are the hosts.”
Or when the Great One (Wayne Gretzky) said, “You always have to be skating to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
Or, when Henry Ford said, “Don’t build a faster horse.”
All metaphors? Yup. All said by people who were innovators and visionaries? You bet. All speak about how brands should be approaching exceptional customer experience for the foreseeable future? Nope. Just 2 out of 3 cover that.
Table of Contents
- Natural Language Conversation Meets Customer Experience
- How Does OpenAI's Instant Checkout Affect Ecommerce Customer Experience?
- How Will This Affect Traditional Ecommerce Customer Experience?
- Why Might This Be the End of Amazon?
- How Does Amazon Have to Innovate to Keep Up in Ecommerce CX?
Natural Language Conversation Meets Customer Experience
Let me explain.
The one quote that doesn’t align to the future of where we are going is Mr. Bezos. Yes, they have built the hottest party on the block that has dominated our consumer behaviors for the last 20 years, but there’s a new party in town that (in my opinion) offers a tastier punch bowl and much better snacks.
And that’s the natural language conversational party.
Recently, you may have seen the new partnership between OpenAI and Shopify, OpenAI's Instant Checkout, where Shopify merchants can have their products pulled directly into ChatGPT so that customers can purchase directly within the experience, and not have to lead the interface what so ever.
And that’s a really, really BIG deal.
Why? Because now – consumers can do all of their shopping, in one place, across brands with conversational elements like “Don’t spend over $50 on that product” or “I need it to be delivered tomorrow” or “Is this really the best brand and quality out there?”
Related Article: The 9 Best Ecommerce Certifications and Courses in 2024
How Does OpenAI's Instant Checkout Affect Ecommerce Customer Experience?
So, what exactly does this mean? How will this affect the traditional ways ecommerce customer experience is conducting today? And why might this be the end of Amazon?
Let’s break down each one of these questions.
Currently, ChatGPT sees about 700 million users per week, which is still significantly less than legacy behemoths like Google; however, when the first iPhones came out, their units sold weren’t nearly what they are today.
So what? Well, as consumers typically do, we take time to ramp up in new categories that require us to think differently about how we typically interact in our daily lives, especially with products or services that we haven’t seen or experienced before.
This means that consumers are discovering that tools like ChatGPT provide new, efficient ways to complete daily tasks that are typically tedious, mundane and in some cases complex. It means that consumers can now have conversations with tools to help us select products or services that meet our own individualistic needs and requests. It means that it will forever change the way we discover, engage and shop digitally.
How Will This Affect Traditional Ecommerce Customer Experience?
Ecommerce as we know it is likely to change forever. Currently, most experiences we are accustom to revolve around finding or discovery a product, navigating to a product detail page, consideration factors around price, fulfilment options and overall fit. Then ultimately, adding the item to a cart and checking out.
This is not the future of digital commerce. The future of digital commerce is generative.
Generative commerce is the concept that product detail pages can be created on the fly, based upon a specific question or query that customer asks an LLM based search solution like ChatGPT. They move from being static, to dynamic – each time a question is asked a brand can create a unique product landing page with content, educational elements and comparative item considerations to help consumers make the best choices.
Generative commerce is a personal shopping agentic bot going out and completing grocery orders for you by shopping multiple sites at the same time, returning products and a shopping cart directly into a ChatGPT-like experience for you to check out.
Imagine a world where all shopping experiences are built for your personality, your expectations and your behaviors? This is the future.
Related Article: OpenAI's ChatGPT Instant Checkout: The Dawn of Conversational Commerce
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Why Might This Be the End of Amazon?
If you’re like me, you may habitually go to Amazon because of convenience, comfort of using and because of their exceptional logistics and fulfillment capabilities. Who doesn’t want same-day delivery, am I right?
But what if there was a better way.
Where Amazon falls short is in the physiological perception they have built around their brand. It’s a large party, and everyone has had the invite for years. But the party hasn’t changed much, it’s the same.
Where OpenAI and others will excel is that they have built a conscious and unconscious psychological prerequisite with consumers that ChatGPT can solve problems through conversational AI. It can help guide and foster a reduction in cognitive dissonance; these perceptions have been engraved in our brains since they have launched.
Conversational Commerce: A New World
The table below summarizes how natural language interfaces are transforming ecommerce and customer experience, with implications for both brands and consumers.
| Theme | Key Insight | Impact on CX |
|---|---|---|
| Shift to conversational interfaces | Partnerships like OpenAI + Shopify enable purchases directly within ChatGPT through natural language commands. | Reduces friction and creates one-stop conversational shopping experiences. |
| Generative commerce | AI dynamically creates product detail pages and comparisons in response to each shopper’s question. | Turns static product browsing into personalized, intent-based journeys. |
| Consumer behavior evolution | Shoppers will increasingly use AI to handle discovery, price filtering, and delivery preferences. | Drives higher expectations for immediacy, intelligence and convenience. |
| Threat to Amazon’s model | Amazon’s traditional UX and search paradigm feel outdated compared to AI-driven conversations. | Forces Amazon to innovate toward conversational, intent-based shopping. |
| Strategic takeaway for brands | Brands should study natural language search data and experiment with AI-led dialogue interfaces. | Prepares organizations for the next phase of CX — one built on conversation, not conversion. |
How Does Amazon Have to Innovate to Keep Up in Ecommerce CX?
This presents a real potential issue for Amazon. Every day Amazon holds true to the way ecommerce has been conducted is another day these LLM chat models gain momentum, habitual behavior and usage. Amazon must completely innovate how consumers shop on their site to stand a chance to survive.
I preface all of this with this: nobody can predict the future, especially me. That being said, I do feel confident that brands need to look at how they conduct digital commerce differently, with a focus more on conversation, not conversion.
Will Amazon revamp their site shopping experience and survive? Maybe. I’ll remind you of brands like Toys R Us who failed to see the writing on the wall that consumers were shifting shopping habits digitally as an example of when an opportunity to innovate and evolve was passed by.
Here is what I will say: you always must be where your customers are and where your customers are going, like Gretzky said. If you’re a brand looking for a path forward, start with talking to your customers. Ask them how they would like to shop in the future, look at your current on site search terms for patterns of long trail, natural language conversational queries and compare that to last year during the same period. You might be surprised with what your customers behaviors are telling you.
As Henry Ford said, “Don’t build a faster horse.” Instead, do what the Great One Gretzky suggests, “Skate to where the puck is going.”
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